The Essence of Life

Saturday, December 8, 2012

The Best Tool Ever Created

The Hunter and the Huntsman

Excellence is the only word
that could describe or be attributed to the iconic Swiss Army Knife.

When I was a child growing up
in Brazil most of the men I knew carried at least one pocketknife, but only a
fortunate few had a Swiss Army knife. The Brazilian economy was very
“protected” against imported products, and basically the only way to acquire
one of these magnificent tools was to travel abroad or have someone that
traveled to bring you one.

I remember when I was ten or
eleven years old that one of my father’s friends traveled to Europe and brought
him a Swiss Army knife. I am quite sure that it was a Mountaineer. He
immediately took it to Seo Lavezzo,
the local saddle maker to have a pouch made, and my father carried that knife
for years, until I liberated it. Eventually my dad got a SwissChamp, a
thirty-two-tool monster that is almost impractical in my personal view.

Personally I have been
carrying Swiss Army knives on an almost daily basis in one form or another for
the last quarter of a century, give or take a couple years. The only reason
that I don’t carry them everyday is because of the existing air travel
restrictions on carry-on luggage that were put in place after the 9/11
terrorist attacks. My current strategy is to have spares knifes in the
facilities that I visit most often.

When I started my
professional life after college I still carried my knife on a belt pouch, and
that was immediately noticed by some of my colleagues, to the point that I
received a copy of a fantastic chronic by Brazilian writer Fernando Sabino “Homens de Canivete” that I will include
without permission at the end of this blog.

Currently I use a belt clip
and carry my Huntsman in the right back pocket of my trousers. I consider the
Huntsman the perfect balance between size and usefulness and this is one tool I
would take with me to a desert island.

My wife continuously
complains that this is an expensive habit and it wears down on the same
particular spot therefore reducing the useful life of my clothes, but I just
can’t go around without my trusted companion. However, she did not complain
when my knife had the only can opener around our new house a couple weeks ago,
and saved the day by allowing her to cook an excellent sweet potato casserole.

Even having a nice collection of custom knifes I only
took with me on safari my inseparable
Swiss Army knife and a custom-made single blade friction folder that my father
gave me. Make sure that your knife has scissors, tweezers, corkscrew, and
bottle opener. Good beer doesn’t have twist caps, South African wine is very
good and the scissors and tweezers are very useful for end of the day surgeries
like picking thorns or rounding toenails.

As a final notice I must say that only a Victorinox
rides my belt. I can’t even get used to Wenger, even if the same company owns
them. As for any copy, forget about them, they are not worth the trouble.

3 comments:

Though I seldom carry mine any more as it wears the battle scars of 40 yrs of use and abuse, I still have my first Victorinox that at the tender age of 11 mother allowed me to buy at the army PX in Caracas.

In order to keep mother happy and save your pants from the clip damage you can do as I show here with some iron on patches from your local fabric store. http://isserfiq.blogspot.com/2012/12/repairs-of-textile-sort.html

About Me

Rodrigo Tardelli Meirelles was born in Brazil, in 1969, and raised on the family farm, Fazenda Taboa, in close contact with the outdoors. By his own definition a dreamer and an explorer, Rodrigo was launched at a young age into a journey in search of knowledge that took him across countries and continents, and the world became the fertile ground where the stories in this book were planted and are now being harvested. True to the pioneer spirit Rodrigo set himself to explore the world, working and raising a family while maintaining his dreams alive and pursuing his passion for hunting and shooting wherever he goes. He currently lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife Maria José, children Maria Eduarda and Daniel and their black lab Tupã.